I missed the official Blueprint Demo Day in NY last week but was able to see the West Coast version at Health 2.0 earlier this week. This is Blueprint’s second class of startups and I was impressed with the success its first class had in raising money and securing pilots during the program. This time around, the incubator had 9 startups. I missed two of the presentations because I had a conference call, so I’ll just sum those up based on the messaging of their websites and other sources from Demo Day.

Health Recovery Solutions (HRS). This is one of the ones that I didn’t see. I’m kind of surprised that it didn’t come up with a new name during the program, something like dischargify (dischargify.com is available as of this writing so that name is based on .com availability). As my fake name implies, the company is trying to reduce readmissions, specifically targeting heart failure. From what I can garner off the website (kudos to them for using the word “obviate” on the site, haven’t seen that much), HRS takes some amount of data on the patient, gains some insights from that data, and then empowers a nurse practitioner to follow-up and ideally prevent readmissions. It’s an “outpatient care program” that doesn’t seem overly reliant on technology, which is probably a good thing. In reading other summaries of HRS, it seems they do data intake with tablets and are planning to gamify the readmission process. Maybe it can partner with Aidin (discharge services coordination company that was part of Blueprint’s first class) to each integration.

Emergency Medicine Business Intelligence (EMBI). Another very long name and another company that I missed at Health 2.0. This is a company out to streamline operations and provide intelligence to optimize the performance of emergency departments. To be honest, this is not an area that I know that much about. It seems like EMBI takes data, cleans it up, and provides dashboards along with canned or customized metrics. EMBI seems to be doing fairly well, based on its list of customers. The goldmine for EMBI, and for lots of patients, would be if it can start diverting people away from the ED to less costly care locations.

AdhereTech. As this name implies, AdhereTech does medication adherence. The core of this offering is a smart pill bottle that track the contents of the bottle, send that data off wirelessly, and then sends reminders and other triggers to increase adherence. The first 3 minutes (each pitch was only 4 minutes) was identical to a presentation I saw by Vitality (Glowcaps) early on, before it was acquired by Nant. I mean identical. Pharma funds pill bottles, pharmacy distributes, patients are more adherent, pharma sells more pills (and of course people are healthier by virtue of being more adherent). Something said in the last minute really piqued my interest, though I don’t know if it really makes any sense or is feasible. The presenter mentioned that AdhereTech sees the potential of the pill bottle to be the hub of data collection and transmission in the home. On the surface, it makes sense to me because pill bottles are everywhere, they are matched to a patient, and wireless technology is getting smaller while battery life is getting longer. I think this is a ways off but I’ll follow to see where things go.

GeriJoy. This was my favorite of the group and might have been my favorite of the whole conference. As the founders said, it’s a talking dog that acts as a companion to elder, facility-bound patients with dementia. Through the talking virtual dog, remote family can send and receive updates at any time. It’s a concept that really makes a lot of sense as a great way to scale a solution to the problem of social isolation. It also makes remote family members feel better by being connected to elderly family member.

SymbiosisHealth. Symbiosis works with employers to help employees find and book appointments. It is targeting members of high deducible plans by offering transparent pricing based on pre-negotiated rates with providers. Once booked and paid for, Symbiosis then assists users in filing the necessary paperwork to assure what was spent is applied to the deductible. It’s a good idea, especially for high priced, and widely variable, services like imaging. Working with large employers is key to success and Symbiosis has a few already signed, including Walgreens. It remains to be seen how many health and wellness services employers will be able to afford per employee. Castlight seems similar to this, but with about $100 million more in investment.

EnHatch. The mission here is to help medical device companies access surgeons and increase their utilization of the devices. I think the main way it does this is by enabling medical devices companies and salespeople to easily develop and push interactive content to surgeon mobile devices. It apparently also enables surgeon to surgeon communication and discussion of cases. Medical devices represent a massive market and, if EnHatch can help get access to docs and get them to use certain devices, it could do very well. This is another area I’m not well-versed in.

DaisyBill. It’s revenue cycle management for workers’ comp billing. The service makes it easy to collect and speeds collections. I’m struggling for anything else to say about it. It’s pretty simple but makes a lot of sense for overcomplicated, niche billing.

AllazoHealth. Allazo, like AdhereTech, is trying to improve patient adherence to medications. Allazo is using the individualized approach by predicting what people will be adherent and then what adherence intervention will be the most effective for each individual. One size definitely does not fit all when it comes to medical non-adherence, but I wonder how effectively Allazo can tailor programs to individuals. I assume the more patients and data, the better it will get. Can just the number of medications taken daily predict non-adherence? This reminds me a lot of another company I recently heard about, RxAnte, which recently raised $4.6 million.

Medikly. Medikly helps pharma companies unify digital strategy, gain market insights, and access providers. Put simply, it’s a marketing platform for drug companies. The presentation was very polished, the founder had a great pedigree and background, and it’s already signed $1.3 million in revenue. Taking all the presentation on face value (and trusting most of what was said was accurate), I’d probably invest in this over everything else if I was only looking for a financial return (and I had the money to invest).